During the chaos that followed the Boston Marathon bombings, Houstonian Lauren McCreary wandered the streets, dazed, damp and shivering in her running clothes. Suddenly, a young man stopped her, unbuttoned his checkered flannel shirt and helped her put it on. When she asked how to get it back to him, he told her to keep it.

And she has. On Friday McCreary planned to pack the shirt along with her running shoes and shorts as she travels to Boston this weekend for Monday's race. Though she is one of the more than 5,600 who accepted the Boston Athletic Association's invitation to finish what they started last year, her run won't be about the two-tenths of a mile she left on the course.

"I know, for me, it's about going back and respecting what this city did for us," she said.

It may be business as usual for the world's fastest men and women as they compete for the $150,000 first-place prizes, but for the rest of the nearly 36,000 participants, spectators, organizers and anyone who follows distance running, the 2014 Boston Marathon will be a 26.2-mile parade of solidarity for the victims, their families, the event and the city. Among the participants will be hundreds of area runners.

"You're out there for all those people who feel so strongly about this, but can't run. You have to be there, whether you're crawling or walking up the hill," McCreary said. "They will be out there tenfold."

Houston runner and dietitian Caryn Honig, who ran the Boston Marathon in 2001 and 2006, had decided two was enough. But after the attack, she became determined to return in 2014.

"They can't ruin the human spirit, and they can't get runners down and keep us from doing what we love to do," Honig said.

Bittersweet moment

So between juggling three jobs - her private practice, teaching at the University of Houston and counseling employees at Texas Children's Hospital - and earning a doctorate, she trained hard. She qualified for Boston at South Dakota's Leading Ladies Marathon in August.

Honig will run in patriotic regalia, including arm and leg warmers with a U.S. flag print. Yet she expects a bittersweet experience at her 35th marathon.

"I think there will be ups and downs more so than any other marathon I've done," she said.

Jim McInerny agrees. He was about a half-mile from the finish of his first - and what he thought would be his only - Boston Marathon, when officials stopped the race.

"Like anyone who was in that situation, I have mixed feelings. There will be a lot of happiness, but a somber moment, too."

After he learned he could return, McInerny decided to make his run about more than a medal. He will be among more than 700 participants with the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge, benefiting research at the Boston cancer institute. Joining him will be his sister, a cancer survivor, and his brother-in-law.

"This was a good opportunity to be running for myself and to give something back to the city of Boston and maybe the wider world," said McInerny, who grew up in Boston.

Shelley Caldwell had qualified for this year's race - her second in Boston - before the bombings.

Last week, she was in the Galleria buying temporary Texas tattoos for the women in her running group who will also participate Monday.

"It's an honor to get to go," she said. "You work so hard, you qualify, and to get accepted and meet all those expectations - it's like playing golf with the Masters. Even people who don't know about marathons know that Boston is the big one."

McCreary, who saw both bombs explode - the second one just yards ahead of her - says her excitement is tempered with worry, though not for her safety. She is anxious about how she will react to the energy of the estimated 1 million spectators.

"I'm a little bit scared about my emotions. I don't want to be that person, when someone says, 'What are you crying about?' It's not about me at all."

Kindness of strangers

The week after the bombings, McCreary kept the soft flannel shirt close to her as a gentle reminder about the kindness of strangers: the people who helped her up when she fell fleeing Boylston Street, the ones who took her hand and comforted her as she walked.

She thinks of the victims - all spectators, like the people who came to her aid - and their families often.

"I would like it to be very respectful and low-key, a quiet remembrance, and I don't think that's what's going to happen."